Wednesday
29th Jan 2020
The EU can hardly criticise Eastern Partnership countries for disrespecting media freedom. Five EU member states, including current presidency Croatia, came below Armenia and Georgia in the 2019 RSF Press Freedom Index. Bulgaria ranked nine places behind Ukraine.
North Macedonia's party leaders agreed on Sunday to hold snap elections on 12 April after the European Council blocked its promised accession talks.
Albania currently faces a serious crisis, which it would be foolish for all actors in the international community to ignore. Yet we must ask that our partners in Europe read Federica Mogherini's report carefully and recognise accomplishments.
By blocking accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania, French president Emmanuel Macron is siding with illiberals.
The president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker described a decision to block Albania and North Macedonia from advancing into the next phase to eventually join the European Union as a historic mistake.
Enlargement has always propelled the EU's growth. On the contrary, every time the European Union closes its doors to potential new members, it chooses a path of decline, warns Ukraine's deputy PM, Dmytro Kuleba.
Letting Serb war crime suspects go free while pursuing Kosovar ones only is bad for Western Balkans reconciliation, Kosovo's outgoing prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, has said.
The EU's eastern neighbourhood is in flux. The collapse of the pro-reform government in Moldova and the stagnation of anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine was recently followed yet by another political crisis in Georgia.
Paris is, by default, now steering the EU's overall policy agenda toward the Western Balkans. This seems to be the opening volley and test bed for Macron's goal of recalibrating the entire EU agenda.
An emergency resolution adopted at the European People's Party (EPP) congress in Zagreb calls on the EU Council and member states to take a positive decision on opening accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania as soon as possible.
EU countries have given a mixed reaction to French proposals on enlargement reform, but ongoing talks did not mean the process had stalled, Finland said.
Western Balkan countries should become EU members via a new, step-by-step process, France has said in a detailed proposal seen by EUobserver.
Over the years, both real and perceived levels of corruption in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia have remained high. The necessary reforms in those countries, to put it mildly, are not yet effectively carried out.
The French veto on EU enlargement is not a political gambit, France says, but what can still be done to restore faith in time for a crunch summit in May?
There has been little substantial analysis, since the Macron veto, of why so much money and effort in the Balkans has failed to result in the political and economic transformation needed to prepare candidates for full membership.
US will push France to lift veto on Western Balkans enlargement to correct a "historic mistake".
The president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, said the Balkan region needs to take care of itself after the EU blocked enlargement talks with North Macedonia and Albania.
Croatia is eligible to join the EU's free-travel area, the Schengen zone, the European Commission has said, but threats of national vetoes remain.
Denmark, France and the Netherlands opposed opening talks on EU accession with Albania and North Macedonia in a blow that may invite greater Russian influence in the Balkan region.
France's veto on North Macedonia enlargement will endanger the Serbia-Kosovo peace process, a senior EU official has warned, but diplomats do not expect Macron to change his mind.
Thursday's EU summit could see French and German leaders butt heads on enlargement after France blocked new Western Balkans talks.
France wants to pause EU enlargement pending major reforms, in what some fear could "destabilise" the Western Balkans.
The site contains Europe's second largest natural pasture and hundreds of local families depend on it, but part of it has been slated to become a military training ground.
Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have demanded to open accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania this year, as Hungary's man prepares to take over the enlargement portfolio.
Serbia will have to dissolve its new pact with Russia's "Eurasian" trade bloc when it joins the EU, the European Commission has said.
EU visa bans and asset freezes in the air over Turkish gas drilling in Cypriot waters as Ankara sends a second ship into disputed zone.
Germany will agree to open EU accession talks with North Macedonia in September, Skopje has said, but Albania's prospects look less bright.
Europe's credibility is at risk in the Western Balkans, half its member states have warned - but EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Albania and North Macedonia unlikely to start accession talks soon.
Kosovo's foreign minister reflects on two decades since his country was saved by Nato, in the first "war for values", and the task ahead to achieve lasting peace with Serbia, and with it, EU membership.
Face-to-face interviews with 15,179 women reveal that beliefs in female subservience and marital obedience continue to persist in south-eastern and eastern Europe.
With a record of 44 candidates running for president, it remains to be seen who will become Ukraine's next leader. But will Ukrainian politicians and their international partners be able to keep the country on the road to reform?
The foreign ministers of Sweden, Poland and the Czech Republic reflect on 10 years of the Eastern Partnership with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
The Kosovan deputy PM calls on Nato members to follow the US in supporting the enlargement of the Kosovo Securitiy Force. "Kosovo owes it to both its own people and the international community to take this step", Behgjet Pacolli says.
